


the structure fell about our feet

by likewinning



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Mental Instability, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 00:55:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2004765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likewinning/pseuds/likewinning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate Universe: Captain America was a game Steve used to dream up when they were kids, but they're not kids anymore. <em>When they were kids, Steve always came back. Eventually, battle won or forfeited, the glaze over Steve's eyes would fade and he'd see Bucky and smile, like all the bad guys were gone forever. Back then, it seemed like they really could be.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	the structure fell about our feet

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the lovely darling actual angel Ashely for listening to me stress about this story for way too long. The concept for this is veeeery loosely based on the Buffy episode "Normal Again," so apologies (or thanks?) to Joss Wheadon. Title from the Decemberists.

The truth is, Bucky's known for years. When they were kids, he'd find Steve in alleyways, fighting imaginary opponents or real ones, a Frisbee or a garbage can lid or nothing at all as his shield.

Sometimes, if Steve was fighting a real person, Bucky would step in, tell the other guy to take a hike.

Sometimes, if it looked like Steve was winning, he'd wait it out, stand on the sidelines until Steve won the battle with no one (the Nazis, HYDRA, whoever – they had a million names) and came back to him.

When they were kids, Steve always came back. Eventually, battle won or forfeited, the glaze over Steve's eyes would fade and he'd see Bucky and smile, like all the bad guys were gone forever.

Back then, it seemed like they really could be.

*

Steve is seventeen when his mother dies. He watches, helpless, as she takes her last breath, and the doctor ushers Steve out of the room soon enough, only coming to him later to discuss what happens next.

He calls Bucky at work, and when there’s no answer, he calls him on his cell phone. Steve says a few words, doesn't hear any of them, and then he hangs up. The floor slides under him, turns from linoleum to dirt. He is deep in the trenches, behind enemy lines. He is small and frightened, surrounded by bigger men. He is shouting his throat raw, trying to reason with them.

"Steve. Hey."

Bucky stands in front of him, gripping his shoulders. Steve looks down, finds the floor has turned to solid ground again. Everything smells like the sick and the dying, except for Bucky, who smells like motor oil from the garage where he works.

The tag on his uniform says "James," and Steve traces a finger over it, grounding himself. He meets Bucky's eyes, reads decades of concern in blue and black. His mother is dead, he remembers.

"Hey," Bucky says, when he sees Steve's back in the world. Behind him, there are doctors and nurses. They all try to look like they haven't been staring at them, at Steve.

"Let me talk to them, all right?" Bucky asks, but Steve shakes his head. "No," he says. "I can do this."

And he can. He talks to the doctor. He makes the funeral arrangements. He tells anyone that's left that his mother's dead.

Reality shakes; out of the corner of his eye, everyone is dangerous, except Bucky.

Bucky makes him eat, holds onto him when his chest tightens up and the asthma attack hits. Bucky reminds him to breathe, keep breathing.

There isn't much money, but it's a beautiful service. Steve only catches some of it, can't focus on much but Bucky's grip on his hand.

Reality shakes, but Steve is there when they bury his mother.

"Look," Bucky says. "Why don't you come home with me tonight?" Steve knows Bucky doesn't think he can handle being alone right now, but he won't say it. Steve knows he's supposed to say okay, but he can't. He can't put it on Bucky to take care of him any more than he already does.

He leaves Bucky on the steps outside his apartment, goes inside and locks the doors. He packs up his mother's belongings to the sound of gunfire.

*

After the funeral, Bucky comes by Steve's place every day. He was there just about every day anyhow, but now it's more than just to hang out.

He knows Steve isn't exactly – dealing with things.

Once, he shows up and the door is locked, even though Steve knows he's coming over. He uses the spare key hidden beneath the doormat, but he still can't get in, not until he pushes and shoves at the barricade Steve has built himself, chairs and furniture piled into some kind of obstacle course.

When Bucky asks, later – when he's waited it out, for Steve to save the day against whoever, for Steve to smile at him like he hasn't seen him in months, to pull him in and hug him so tight Bucky can only just breathe – Steve can't tell him what it was all for.

Bucky doesn't push it. He's here, and he's present, so they just put all the furniture back where it was and they sit on the couch watching highlights from today's Yankees game.

Most days, though, Steve is all right. He goes to his job at the movie theater, fights with the dumb punks who can't keep it down. He gets Bucky and whatever girl Bucky's seeing that week free tickets. He tells Bucky he doesn't need to keep bringing food over, really, but he eats it all anyway.

For his part, Bucky tries to keep Steve distracted. He drags him out on double dates, carts him off to Coney Island for cotton candy and the Cyclone. Steve pretends like he hates it, but Bucky knows he doesn't, really, because he never _leaves_ during any of those times. He's right there, telling Bucky he's a jerk - telling Bucky thank you, even that night they have a few too many beers at that bar a few blocks from Steve's apartment.

Of course, any amount of beers is too many for Steve. Bucky ends up half-carrying Steve back to the apartment, bitching about how heavy Steve is for such a little guy, and Steve laughs and mutters, "Hey, you wanna join the army, you gotta be strong."

He doesn't remember telling Steve about enlisting, but he figures, maybe, he's a little more drunk than he thought he was, and he let something slip.

"You’re right," Bucky says, laughing a little. He sets Steve down on his couch, and plops down next to him. Steve smiles up at him, something a little sad that makes Bucky want to say _you’re wrong, I’m not going anywhere_ but it’s too late for that. Instead, he stays with Steve until Steve falls asleep, tucks some blankets around Steve’s too-thin frame, kisses Steve’s forehead, and uses his spare key to lock the door behind him when he leaves.

*

They celebrate Steve's birthday together before Bucky ships out for training camp. They go to a movie and then the arcade, and then Bucky treats him to a dinner of hotdogs and ice cream before they head up to the park to catch the fireworks.

Steve has always loved fireworks, for as far back as Bucky can remember. They each have a couple burn scars from trying to light them by themselves as kids one year, but even that never scared them off. The fireworks start up and everyone stares up at the sky, and Bucky watches Steve, watches his face go from content to exhilarated in seconds.

All at once, Bucky doesn't want to leave him, tomorrow or next week or any day after that. But he has his orders; there's a war going on, and people dying, and Bucky can't just stand around fixing cars and pretending that's enough.

He just wishes he wasn't going alone.

But no recruiter would let Steve into a humvee in the middle of the desert, and, Bucky tells himself, he'll be out in a year or so. It might be good, healthy even, for them to spend some time apart.

He still feels guilty as hell for leaving Steve, though, and he just about says as much. "Don't worry about it," Steve tells him, as they walk back to Steve's apartment. Their ears are still ringing from the fireworks, and there are still faint pops and flashes of light in the sky. It's late, and Bucky has to be up early tomorrow, but he doesn't want to go.

"You know," Steve points out, when they're back in his apartment and Bucky says about as much, "I did make it my first ten years without you."

He knows that, but sometimes, when he thinks back to how they met – some little punks were kicking the shit out of Steve, and Steve was small and outnumbered but so brave – he wonders how.

He wonders, too, how he ever made it without Steve.

"Yeah," Bucky teases him. "But you'd probably be as big and strong as I am if I'd met you earlier."

Steve snorts. "I'd probably be a hell of a lot smarter, too, if I'd never met you at all." He smiles, but then his expression turns serious again and he adds, "I probably would've gotten the crap kicked out of me a whole lot more, too."

"Yeah, well," Bucky says, clapping him on the shoulder. "You just inspire that in people."

Steve laughs, and before he goes Bucky pulls him into a hug. "Be good, okay?" he asks, and what he means is _be safe_ \- Steve hasn't had any incidents in months, not one outbreak of crime-fighting, not one fort made out of chairs and couch cushions, and Bucky really thinks, maybe, he's past it all. 

"Don't do anything stupid," Bucky tells him, and Steve buries his face in Bucky's neck for a minute before he pulls back and grins. "How can I?" he asks. "You're taking all the stupid with you."

Bucky shakes his head, and they look at each other for a minute. Steve's still too thin, still looks beyond tired, most of the time, like he's already been in a war, but when he smiles at Bucky everything about it still gives him hope.

Before he can think better of it, Bucky leans down and kisses Steve, quick, on the forehead. Steve looks at him for a long minute, like he's deciding something, but then he just says, "Get outta here, Buck. Go save the world."

"I'll call you, okay?" Bucky asks. He's at the door; Steve's practically pushing him that way. "Whenever I get a chance. And I'll write."

"You better," Steve says.

He waits until he hears the click of the lock to head down the stairs. There are still fireworks going off above him as he walks back to his apartment for his last night in Brooklyn for a long, long, time.

*

For the first few days after Bucky leaves, Steve goes on with his life. He works at the movie theater. He watches television. He reads, and he sketches, and everything is fine, except that his apartment is too quiet at night, and he has been turned down, again and again, by army recruiter after army recruiter.

The country is at war, and Steve wants to help, not sit on the sidelines.

Then (Bucky's been gone for weeks, and if Steve remembered he had a cell phone it would be full of missed calls, voicemails, text messages), Steve meets a man, a doctor, who offers him a chance to kill Nazis. To change his life.

Steve says yes. (The neighbors don't see him for days at a time, complaining that there must be elephants up there stomping on the floorboards, complaining that Steve must be leaving the TV on.)

He writes to Bucky from the camp. He doesn't tell him what he's doing, not exactly; he knows it sounds too nuts, and Bucky might tell him not to go through with it.

Instead, he talks about other things, the people he's met, the things he's read in the news. _I hope you're being careful and using your brain_ , he writes, _but you're probably not._

(The letters wind up back in his mailbox, addressed to someplace that doesn't exist. Steve doesn't check his mail, doesn't see the stack of letters from Bucky.)

At Camp Lehigh he meets Peggy, and she's beautiful and fierce and she treats Steve like a person, like someone worthwhile, and for the first time since Bucky, Steve has someone who believes in him.

(Little bits of reality do poke through, sometimes. Steve pays his rent, goes to work. He tries, _tries_ to keep the ground beneath his feet, but HYDRA agents are everywhere.)

*

Bucky breezes through training. He shows skill, and dedication, and the men like him. He gets promoted once, then again. They send him to sniper school out in Georgia, and he knows buried beneath the cold fact of death, it's an honor.

He writes home to his mom and sister a few times, but mostly he writes to Steve. He's starting to worry. The first few letters he sent went unanswered, and that's fine – things do get lost in the mail, and maybe Steve's busy at work, maybe he met a girl, maybe anything.

But when Bucky ships out, Afghanistan-bound, he can't help but worry that maybe, there's something more to it. Steve hasn't answered his calls, letters, any of it.

He writes to his sister, asks if she can go over and check up on Steve, invite him out for a meal or something. Anything, to confirm that Steve's all right.

*

After he saves that kid's life, Steve's name is in all the papers. But Colonel Phillips wants nothing to do with him anymore; Erskine's dead, and Steve's the first and last of his kind. No good for much of anything but a promotional stunt.

So he becomes their show monkey. He does the song and dance routine with the girls. He knocks out Adolf Hitler every night, and every night, he wonders what Bucky's doing in the real war.

(For a while, his phone buzzes in his pocket, and once, he surfaces long enough to grab coffee with Bucky's sister. She tells him to get a haircut, and to write to Bucky, but Steve insists that he has been, every night.)

And then Italy happens. And he figures it out, that Bucky's missing, and his heart stops, just like that, when Colonel Phillips says, "I'm sorry, son."

He can't be dead.

He.

(His neighbors hear the shouts, and the cops come), but Steve is nowhere to be found. He's climbing up rooftops and punching out HYDRA thugs. He's saving hundreds of men, but all he cares about is Bucky.

Bucky's alive; captured, but alive, and Steve holds him up and Bucky asks, "What happened to you?" and Steve says, easy as anything, "I joined the army."

They escape in a blur (the cops get him in cuffs, hold him for a while), all of them, walking and driving miles and miles back to camp, and Steve has missed Bucky so much, there's so much he wants to tell him about everything, but there are still men dying everywhere and the words don't quite come out.

But Bucky's alive.

*

Bucky has a short break, a shore leave of sorts between Afghanistan and Iraq, just long enough to track Steve down and figure out what the hell his problem is. Becky wrote him, told him she'd seen him, but Bucky still hasn't heard a word from him. It might be nothing (he knows it's not), but when he gets to the apartment, the door is unlocked, and Steve's

Nowhere at all.

The place is empty, like no one has ever lived here, like Bucky and Steve didn't run around every inch of this place, this tiny apartment where Steve grew up, playing cops and robbers and superheroes.

There's nothing here, and Bucky swallows the fear that's choking him, ignores the hole he feels opening in his chest, and walks downstairs. He bangs on the landlady's apartment door, all sense of decency gone right out the fucking window.

"Where's Steve?" he asks, before she's even got the chain off the door. She never liked Bucky much, never liked anyone much as far as Bucky's ever been able to tell, but she opens the door and gives Bucky this _look_ and tells him to come in. Sit down.

"No," Bucky says. She's wearing a bathrobe and her grey hair is all frizz, but her place is pristine, nothing out of place. He's never been in here before. "Just tell me where he is, I –"

_I was supposed to be here_.

She sighs, and gives him this sad look like Bucky's never seen. "They took him, kiddo."

" _Who_?" Bucky asks, even though something tells him he knows.

He's always _known_ , but it was – it was just pretend. A game they played as kids, Steve the war hero. Sure, he took it too far sometimes, sure, Bucky worried, but it was never –

"The cops, sweetie." She opens a window, grabs a pack of cigarettes from the ledge and lights one up. "A couple months ago. I didn't wanna call them, but I had no choice. He was terrifying everyone here. I told them he'd just lost his ma, give him some time, but he was breaking into apartments. For such a little guy, he was a terror."

The floor tries to catch up with him, but Bucky steadies himself on the doorframe and asks again, "Where is he?"

The landlady hesitates. She finishes her cigarette and then says, "He might not know you, kid. He was – something to see."

"He'll know me," Bucky says. In the army you don't beg and plead; you let your rank speak for itself, and right now, he's Lt. James Buchanan Barnes and he wants to know what the hell they've done with his friend.

"Let me get you the address, I wrote it down in case any family –"

Bucky takes the paper from her, barely registering her voice over the noise in his head. "He doesn't have any family," he says. "Just me."

*

Steve stands high above the world. Bucky stands beside him, and the other Howling Commandos. It's been weeks since he got Bucky back, but when Steve looks at him he still gets that feeling of pride, that thrill –

Bucky's been saving him his whole life, and Steve finally got to return the favor.

He's so glad to have him back.

(The doctors keep him sedated, most of the time. He's attacked more than a few of the wards, gone running down hallways like a man on a mission, bowling down anything in his path.)

"Remember when I made you ride the Cyclone at Coney Island?" Bucky asks him, and far above the whole world, both of them about to do something incredibly stupid (or brave, which is by and large the same thing), Steve knows where this is going.

(He never has any visitors. The doctors have little more than his name to go on; no parents, no next of kin, nothing but the apartment the police brought him from and a work history.)

"Yeah, and I threw up?" Steve asks.

"This isn't payback, is it?"

*

At the hospital, they don't want to let Bucky see him. He's not family, he's no one, might as well be a ghost. But he begs the nurse, flashes her his brightest smile and his dog tags, says, "It's the only day I've got to see him, and I'm all he's got."

And she knows no one comes to see Rogers, so finally she nods and walks him down the hallway. She tells him what she can: how they found him, the cops, raving about Nazis and something called HYDRA. How he'd come out of it, sometimes, and you'd think for a minute – but then his eyes would glaze back over and he'd start giving everyone orders for their next attack on a HYDRA base.

It's a long hallway, and Steve's room is at the end. Bucky hears Steve before he sees him, and he prepares himself for the worst, for Steve not to recognize him, for –

" _Bucky_ ," Steve says when he sees him, and he's up from the bed, stumbling from whatever drugs they have him on to keep him calm, and he's still so _small_ and even though the nurse is saying, " _Sir_ ," to warn him, Bucky's got Steve in his arms in seconds.

"Hey," Bucky says. He doesn't want to put Steve down, but he has to before the nurse has a cardiac and calls the doctor over or something. He sets Steve down on the bed to look at him. His hair's getting long, and although his eyes are wide and bright, there are circles under them. He looks even thinner than when Bucky left him, and Bucky wants to turn around and start shouting orders at the staff but he's too busy checking, "Hey, you in there?"

Steve nods at him, looking up at him with the kind of fierce adoration that would startle Bucky, if he knew he wasn't probably looking at him the same way.

Bucky glances over at the nurse. She's gorgeous, red hair and bright red lips, and her nametag says _Natasha_. Her arms are crossed, and she's looking at them with concern. "Hey –" Bucky starts. "Could you give us a minute?"

She hesitates, but then nods and turns to go. "I'll be right outside if he –" she looks at Steve then, who seems to be seeing her for the first time in a while – "if you need anything."

The door closes with a soft click, and Bucky looks back at Steve. There are a million things Bucky wants to ask, needs to ask, but the first thing he says is, "You never wrote me back."

"I know," Steve says. He rubs at his face, and Bucky can see bumps and bruises on his arms, wonders if they've had to restrain him here. "I'm sorry. I thought –"

He stops, swallows. He looks at his hands, clenched into fists in his lap, then back up at Bucky. "How's the army?"

Bucky smiles at him. "It's fine," he lies. "I go back tomorrow morning." He watches Steve, waiting for a reaction, but it's like a switch has been pulled, or whatever pills they've been giving him are working for a minute. He's fine.

"I wish I was going back with you," Steve says.

"Steve," Bucky starts, but Steve says, "I know. But I should _be_ there."

Truth is, Bucky doesn't know where Steve should be. Not in Afghanistan or Iraq, where everything's a fucking mess and Bucky will be fortunate if he makes it out limbs intact. Not here, where everything is grey and cold and smells like sickness.

"So," Bucky says, like it's no big deal that his friend is in a mental hospital, "how are we gonna get you outta here?"

Steve meets him sarcastic remark for sarcastic remark, like always. "I dunno, Buck. You a doctor now?"

Bucky wishes. Jesus, he wishes. He'd do anything to help Steve, really help him. He'd go AWOL and run them both off to Mexico, if he thought it would do any good. At least then Steve would get some sun.

There's nothing he can do but be here for as long as possible, so he sits with Steve and they talk about Bucky's time in the army (the things he _can_ talk about, anyway – the longer he's in it, the longer there's a hell of a lot he won't be talking about any time soon). They talk about times before, running around Brooklyn like a couple of dumb punks.

They talk until Bucky manages to make Steve smile, and then there's a knock on the door, and the nurse is back. "I'm sorry," she says. "It's time for his medication, I – I waited an extra five minutes," she admits.

Bucky wants to tell her to wait five more, but Steve touches his arm, looks up at the nurse and says, "That's all right, Natasha." She blinks at him, like she's shocked he knows his name, but she steps into the room and Steve turns back to Bucky and says, "They're gonna knock me out, the pills she's got. You should probably go."

"No," Bucky says. He's up and glaring at Natasha like she's not just doing her job, but Steve still has his hand on his arm and he squeezes, tight. Bucky looks down at him. "I can't leave you," Bucky says.

"You have to," Steve says. He grins at Bucky. "You're a hero now."

"I'm not," Bucky says. He shakes his head. He's not that; he'll never be that. Not after what he's seen and done.

"For me, you always were," Steve says. He looks straight at Bucky when he says it, not embarrassed at all.

The nurse – Natasha – clears her throat, and Bucky steps back so she can give Steve his pills. "Do they help?" Bucky asks her while Steve swallows them down. "With his…" Bucky never knows what to call them. He _knows_ the words, but he can't bring himself to say them.

"Not as often as we'd like," Natasha admits. "We're still trying to figure it all out."

Bucky nods, and Natasha steps back again, but she still waits for him at the door, signaling it's time to go. He looks at Steve, and Steve smiles up at him. "I missed you," he admits.

Bucky doesn't say it back. If it's not obvious that he feels it back, nothing is. He puts both his hands on Steve's face, leans his head down until they're eye to eye. "Write to me," he says. "And get better, okay?"

Steve puts both his hands over Bucky's. His skin feels cold, and he's too thin, and Bucky wants to wrap him up in his arms and take him the fuck out of here, but he knows he can't.

He knows he has to go.

"I'll try," Steve says, and then his eyelids start to flutter open and closed, the meds kicking in fast. Bucky lets him go, and follows Natasha back down the hall.

They don't speak until they reach the end of the hall, the sound of their shoes on the tile and other patients shouting and shuffling in other rooms filling the silence. Then she turns to him and asks, "You're him, aren't you? The one he's always saving."

Bucky stares at her. "He saves me?"

"All the time." She hesitates, but says, "Or at least he tries. I'm not sure…" She clears her throat. "This is the first time he's been lucid in weeks."

He doesn't know what to say. This is his fault, and Natasha seems to know he's thinking that, because she says, "You couldn't have known. These things, they…" She shakes her head, tries to smile. "He's very fortunate to have someone like you."

That's not the word Bucky would use, but he nods and asks her to please make sure Steve gets the letters he sends.

It's only when he leaves, finds himself outside on a crowded Brooklyn street, that he starts to shake like he hasn't since his first night in Afghanistan.

*

What's supposed to be a few more months in Iraq turns into two years. Each time he thinks he's out, that it's done, they pull him back, telling him the work he does is too important. 

He sends the money they offer him to Steve, for his hospital bills, but the missions they send him on feel less and less like anything Steve would ever want him to do.

He swallows that all, compartmentalizes like they tell you to do. In Iraq there are riots, there's blood and dirt and dead children, and bad men that they order him to kill.

_Take him down_ , they say, and he just wants to go home, so he says _yes, sir_ , over and over, until like the rest of them, his rifle becomes an extension of him, of who he is.

None of them sleep much, even when it's quiet – and it hardly ever is. They all have big dark circles under their eyes; they all chew too much tobacco, shake and shudder from too many caffeine pills.

He still writes to Steve, but there's less and less time for it, less and less he's allowed to say at all except: _I miss you_ and _This will all be over soon._

He's stopped really believing that. His hair grows long and his muscles grow strong; he goes cold and silent, more mission than man the longer he's out here. The other men and women have a name for him, he knows, and it sure as hell isn't Bucky.

*

Steve tries. He does. They all do. For a while, it seems like the pills are finally doing what they're meant to do. He's aware of the hospital, the nurses, the doctors. Natasha even reads him a couple of Bucky's letters, but sometimes it takes weeks before another one comes.

But he's doing better. He is. He wakes up in the morning and knows where he is, why he's there, for months, until one day he's

standing high above the world again, talking to Bucky, saying,

"Now, why would I do that?"

They jump onto the train. It's freezing and the wind beats at them but superstrength and adrenaline take over, pushing them on. They fight HYDRA's goons, and for a minute there, Steve loses track of Bucky. But this is routine, almost; they know how to fight together now, like when they were kids playing cops and robbers, playing superheroes.

But then everything falls apart, all at once, and

Bucky falls

so far and

Steve can't catch him, can't do anything at all but scream.

(And nurses come running down the hall, and Steve doesn't recognize them, barely even sees them, only just hears them saying, "Steve, Steve."

They start to hold him down so they can restrain him – the bruises from the first restrains have long since faded, and it gave them all hope – but then all at once, he goes completely still.

He's just gone.

Natasha turns to one of the nurses and says, "Go get Dr. Wilson."

But there's nothing that works, no magic shot. For weeks, then months, he drifts in and out. There's a racket a few days after the first stillness –)

"I gotta put her in the water," Steve says, and the world goes cold,

(– and then nothing at all.

Each day, the nurses move him around, prop him up against pillows and try to get him to eat. The doctor tries a new treatment.

Each day, Natasha sits down on a chair by Steve's bed and reads him Bucky's letters.)

*

It all happens faster than he can see, can predict. One minute the mission is going fine, routine – if there's anything routine at all that happens here – and the next, well.

He supposes he should be grateful. He's the only one of his men to even make it out of the mess at all.

It hurts. It surprises him, almost, after the number of bullets he's taken, just how much it fucking _hurts_.

He figured the shock would dull the pain for bit, but it doesn't really. Luckily everyone out to kill him seems to have been hit from the same explosion. Luckily if they're alive, their ears are probably ringing as badly as his are, because he makes so much noise swearing in three different languages while he tourniquets his wound that he'd be sure to attract their attention, otherwise.

At least, he figures, if he survives this, they might finally send him home.

It takes hours for anyone to pull him back out after he radios for extraction. He leans back against the only building not on fire and concentrates on not bleeding to death.

He thinks about Steve and wonders if he's ever imagined anything as bad as this.

*

When Steve wakes up, they all feel a little spark of hope. It's been nearly six months; he comes out now and again, long enough to ask after his friend, the one they all know hasn't written in almost a year (until Steve remembers he's dead, he watched him die, saw him fall so impossibly far he couldn't have survived).

This time, though, Steve wakes up, and he knows who he is, if not the year or _where_ he is.

It's progress, of a sort.

Sometimes he recognizes the hospital bedroom, the scratchy sheets and the bit of plastic around his wrist with his name and birthdate.

Sometimes he's somewhere new, a place he hasn't thought about in years. A new mission, a new world, full of things he half-remembers like a dream.

They change his medication once, then again. The first seems only to agitate his symptoms, and he wakes up the other patients shouting about gods and aliens and green men.

But the second holds promise.

*

It's been two years since he's been home. Everything seems loud and bright and jarring, and the subways make him nervous. He knows he should go home first, see his mom and sister, but it's been two years – he needs to see Steve.

There's someone else in Steve's room, an old woman with long dark hair that stares up at him in surprise when he barges in. "Sorry," he croaks out, startled. 

"We moved him," says a voice behind him, and he turns to see Natasha. She looks different than the last time he was here, but then, so does he. She offers him a small smile and starts walking back up the hall, indicating for him to follow. "We thought a change might do him some good."

She glances back at him now and again as they walk, like she's making sure it's still him. He knows he looks strange; this morning, he barely recognized himself in the mirror. His hair is longer, his face leaner. Where once he just looked built up from training, every part of him, now, could be used as a weapon.

"That looks like it hurt," she says about his arm. He hasn't bothered to cover it up, the long scar that runs from his wrist almost to his shoulder, evidence that he almost lost it completely. They turn a corner and he asks, "How – how has he been?"

She doesn't say anything for a minute. They stop outside Steve's door, and she looks at him. "It's been a rough year. A lot – happened, in his world. Don't be surprised if he's not – who you remember."

He shakes his head. "It's Steve. That's all I need to know."

Natasha nods, and lets him into the room. "I'll give you two some time. Just yell if anything –" she swallows, manages a small smile that attempts to be reassuring. "Just yell."

Steve looks up as the door opens. He's been awake, the last few days, if not all the way here.

(They saved New York, all of them. It felt good, but there was something unreal about it all, something shaky.

It's all been strange, since waking up, but at the same time – almost familiar.)

The man at the door, Steve knows him.

Except it's impossible.

The man at the door has hair much longer than Steve remembers. His left arm is marred by one long scar. He is silent as he looks Steve over, taking everything in.

The man at the door (stepping closer now, where Steve sits on his bed, thinking about iron men and archers on rooftops) has a face that Steve would know anywhere, has the face of someone that Steve would have died to save.

The man at the door (at Steve's bedside, leaning down to look at him) cannot possibly be real.

(It's the first time he realizes, fully and without doubt, that he might be here, in this place, for a reason.)

"Steve."

(Steve doesn't believe in ghosts. But then, he didn't believe in gods of thunder, either, until a few weeks ago.)

"No," Steve says. He looks right at the ghost, into Bucky's eyes. They're just as Steve remembers, but Bucky's been –

"You're dead," Steve says.

The ghost says nothing. He stares at Steve, eyes going wide, and if Steve believed in ghosts, he still wouldn't believe that ghosts could cry.

"Steve, it's me, man, come on," he tries, but Steve shuts his eyes. He's trying to wake back up where he's supposed to be, in a shitty Brooklyn apartment, waiting for Bucky to come back.

Neither of them is supposed to be here.

He has not been Bucky to anyone in some time, but he waits, silent, until Steve opens his eyes again. Bucky's hands – hands that have remained steady as they killed dozens of men all for the sake of peace or freedom or whatever they're calling it these days – shake when they reach out for Steve.

In all the years Steve has been like this, no matter how many times he disappeared, Bucky has always been able to bring him back. It's never been like this. He's never had to fight for it.

He is so tired of fighting.

Steve flinches away when Bucky touches his arm, and Bucky feels that hole in his chest that opened a few years ago widen.

"Steve," Bucky says, and Steve shakes his head.

"It can't be you," Steve says. "I watched you die."

_You're him, aren't you?_ Bucky remembers the nurse asking. _The one he's always trying to save?_

"You didn't," Bucky says. His throat feels raw; he's barely spoken to anyone in months, just _please_ and _thank you_ to the nurses at the VA, the occasional _hey man_ to another soldier.

Steve looks at him then almost like he's trying to reason with Bucky. "You fell, Bucky. You fell so far. I reached out for you, but I couldn't catch you in time. You were just – gone."

His eyes are bright, like he might cry. Bucky hasn't seen him like this since that day at the hospital, after his mom passed. He remembers getting the phone call at the garage, remembers telling Jeff he had to go, now, that Steve needed him. He remembers speeding through Brooklyn, up three flights of stairs at the hospital because the elevator was too slow, remembers hearing Steve yelling at everyone until he saw Bucky and just stopped.

"I'm right here," he says. "I know I look like hell, but I'm right here. You didn't –"

"I did," Steve says. He's loud, frantic; all he wants is for Bucky (for the ghost he thinks he sees) to go, get out and stop haunting him.

Bucky can't do this again.

"I'm _sorry_ ," Steve tells him. Bucky tries to speak, but Steve won't let him. "Please. I know you're not really here. They're always telling me none of you are – you gotta go. You're not here."

The ghost stares at him for a long, long time. Steve's been listening to them tell him for years that he's seeing things, that he's mixed up, but – he never fully believed them, until right now.

He expects the ghost to slip through the walls, disappear in a cloud of smoke just like the movies. If he believed in ghosts, that's what he'd believe they did.

The ghost uses the door, and it clicks shut behind him.

*

Bucky goes home, wherever that is. His mom and his sister fawn on him, ask him what the army's been feeding him. They talk about their lives and their jobs and Bucky's missed them, he has, but part of him just wants to know why the hell they haven't been to see Steve this whole time.

One of them could have gone there, proved to Steve he wasn't dead.

But they have their own lives; he gets that. He tries to smile and listen to them, but the back of his mind is always focused on Steve.

When Bucky got to the hospital after he lost all his men, he was sure he was dead. He was covered in blood and burns; the nurses looked at him with wide sad eyes, and he was sure that was it.

He didn't expect to live, just to be told he's dead.

After a while of staying with his mom, he knows it's time to get back in the world. On the off-chance he sleeps, he wakes her up in the middle of the night shouting, scrambling out of bed. There are always IEDs, always regular-looking cars that explode into nothing and level half a street.

Meanwhile, he sends his money to the hospital. He tries to check on Steve, but this time the doctor comes out to meet him. He's young, with a nice smile and an easy-going manner, but he tells Bucky right out that he doesn't think it's a good idea for Steve to see him.

"It's a tricky time right now," the doctor says. "Seeing you might not be the best idea."

"But he knows me," Bucky says. "I'm all he's got."

_He's all I've got_ is what Bucky wants to say, even if technically it's not true.

"But he thinks you're dead." The doctor sighs. "Seeing you – it triggered something in him. Steve no longer believes, most of the time, that he's some sort of super soldier, but the last big thing that happened, in his head, was your death."

"So he thinks I’m some kind of –" he won't say it. Still can't bring himself to say it.

"He thinks you're part of that, yeah. I'm sorry," Doctor Wilson says. "If he saw you again, he might think his treatment's not working. And I really think it might this time, if we go about this the right way."

Bucky doesn't say _okay._ The words don't come out. But he nods, like some small part of him might understand.

"Just –" he says. "If he –" he swallows, stops. The words catch in his throat.

"We'll get him back," the doctor says. "And he'll know you were here."

*

Most of the time, Steve sleeps. He wakes up in his hospital bed each afternoon, and most of the time, he knows exactly where he is.

Most days, Steve wakes up and he knows there's only one god, and he doesn't fly around with a hammer. He knows there are no big green men, and he's never gotten far enough outside of Brooklyn to meet any secret agents.

Eventually, he finds himself skinny and small, twenty-three and in the twenty-first century, in a room with a view to grounds he's sure he's never walked on.

He sees the doctor every day, for reports. Steve likes Doctor Wilson. He's young, around Steve's age, and he manages to joke around with Steve now and again. He assures Steve he's doing well, that if the medicine keeps working he could, maybe, go home.

"To be honest with you, Doc, I'm not too sure where that is," Steve tells him.

It's not, certainly, among super–powered friends who don't exist. It's not the army, where Steve's never really been. Home, once, was a shitty apartment in Brooklyn where he and Bucky spent most of their time.

Home was anywhere that Bucky might have been.

"It's wherever you make it," the doctor says. "Somewhere you feel safe. Comfortable. You're not alone, Steve." The doctor hesitates. It's been months, and Steve's well on the way to recovery. He's lucid; he's friendly with the other patients, now that he's in the world enough to meet them. And most importantly, he wants to get better.

Steve looks up at him, and Dr. Wilson says, "Your friend, the one you used to save?"

"Bucky," Steve says. It feels like the first time he's said his name in months. Natasha showed him the letters again, now that he knows where he is, but he hasn't been able to face them yet.

"Yeah," Dr. Wilson says. He looks Steve in the eye, says, "He's alive, Steve. He's all right. Whatever pain you've got from what happened in your head, man, you gotta let that all go."

Steve knows. He's known for a while. When he first realized, he couldn't breathe. His chest felt ready to seize up, and he thought of being ten, fifteen, seventeen, and Bucky holding him through bad asthma attacks, reminding him to just – keep breathing.

He remembers Bucky bringing him out of every bad thing he imagined (so real at the time, the dirt of trenches beneath his feet, the heavy shield in his hands, the sound of gunfire making his ears ring) just by saying, "Hey, I got you."

_I got you._

He remembers, too, the ghost in his room. It couldn't have been Bucky; he remembers knowing, without a doubt, that it couldn't be him. Steve had let him down. Let him fall so, so far.

And he let him down again, by not knowing him.

It's been eating him up. "I know," he says.

For the first time in a while, reality flickers around him. He feels the ground shake, when it really doesn't at all.

He clenches his hands into fists until it passes.

He has to get better. He has to get _better_ ¸ and then he needs to find Bucky.

*

The guys at Bucky's new job keep their distance for a while, but it's a respectful distance. None of them say anything about the scars that run down his arm, or the way he keeps his too-long hair tied back in a ponytail. A couple of the younger guys at the garage get brave and ask Bucky if he has any stories to tell, though.

"Nothing you'd want to remember," he says. Instead, when the kids take him out for drinks after work, he talks and talks about Steve, and growing up in Brooklyn, and how he's spent all this time getting back to someone who thinks he's dead.

How it's worth it, still.

The kids and the drinks get him talking more than he's spoken in years, and he thinks about the few occasions he could convince Steve to go out drinking with him. Usually one or two beers and Steve was done for, leaning on Bucky and grinning at him, warm and happy against him. Girls would come by and try to talk to them, and Bucky would smile pretty at them but wave them off.

Even then, he knows now, he was spoken for. The only person he ever wanted to take home was Steve. 

He gets too drunk from the rounds the kids keep buying him, and they end up half-carrying him home, each with an arm around him to prop him up. They tell him, "Get some rest, James," and he thinks about tucking Steve in after trying to sneak him back into the apartment without his parents catching them. Sixteen, bombed on stolen beers, and Steve looking up at him from his bed like Bucky was the greatest thing he'd ever seen. His dad had been dead for a year, and his mom wasn't sick yet, and the light had started to come back into Steve's eyes. Nothing crazy had happened in weeks.

He remembers, before he falls asleep on the shitty couch in his tiny apartment, even that too soft for someone who has slept on rocks and rubble for years, kissing Steve, once, a lifetime ago, first on the forehead and then, when Steve reached up to pull him closer, on the mouth.

Less than a week later, Steve's mom got sick and everything started to fall to pieces again. But for a moment, there, things were good.

Here, drunk and a war and a hospital stay later, Bucky tries to believe things could be that way again.

*

They let him out on a Tuesday morning, after countless meetings with his doctors – they all just want to be sure that he's ready, and he gets that.

The truth is, he's not even all the way sure himself. "Just take your pills," Dr. Wilson tells him. "I know it sounds obvious, but people stay on them a while, they start to think they're all right, and then the next thing you know you're fighting Godzilla again."

"I never fought Godzilla," Steve says.

"You would've won though, right?"

Steve smiles at him. He owes Dr. Wilson a lot, he knows – he knows dealing with his condition can't be easy for anyone. Even after months of treatment, he's still getting used to the sight of himself – scrawny but finally putting on some weight, tired eyes from years of battling against his own head.

"Yeah," he says. "I would've won."

The hardest part, at first, is just being out in the open again. In his head, Steve has walked these streets a hundred times in the last few years, but it's only, really, as the cars rush past him and the people knock into him, nearly knock him over, that the unreality of all of that sets in.

He doesn't have any family to go to, anyone to call except – except the one person he knows, knows like breathing, will still be there for him.

*

Bucky's late for work this morning, after another night out with some of the guys. He wakes up with the kind of headache you don't even get from the racket of gunshots or sleeping on the cold ground, and only the need for aspirin gets him out of bed at all.

He throws on yesterday's clothes, shoves his hair into a ponytail, and stumbles three blocks to his work. Ed's at the desk, and he doesn't say anything about the time, just smirks a little, amused at Bucky's appearance, and says, "Someone here to see you."

For a moment, Bucky just blinks at him, but then he glances past the desk, where, sitting on one of the waiting room chairs is –

_"Steve."_

In the military, they train you to compartmentalize. They teach you to be cold, and silent, and deadly. The longer you're there, the less you're supposed to think about anything that matters, except the weapon in your hand, the weapon you've become.

Here, Bucky doesn't give a shit about any of that. In seconds, he's across the room and saying, " _Steve_ ," again like Steve's the goddamn messiah risen up, and he might as well be for the way Bucky smiles at him, really smiles for the first time in what must be years. His face hurts from it.

Steve smiles back just as hard. He stands up as Bucky comes toward him, and he doesn't even fight it when the strength of Bucky's hug lifts him up off the ground, just holds on tighter like there's nothing else in the world to do.

It's loud in the garage with the whine of machines going, the AC blasting, Tim's constant playlist of bad heavy metal blaring out of the speakers, but in his ear Bucky can still hear Steve saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I shoulda…"

Bucky puts him down, finally. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Ed looking at them a little funny, and he doesn't care, but what he wants to say, he doesn't want to say with anyone else around.

With a nod to Ed, Bucky takes Steve's arm and leads him back outside. The streets are still quiet for this time of day, and it's warm and sunny out already. The light hurts both their eyes, Bucky from his hangover and Steve, Bucky guesses, from spending so much time indoors.

They walk a little ways, Bucky still holding onto Steve (and yeah, probably for dear life – Steve thought he was dead, and Bucky hardly allowed himself to think at all) until they reach a shady spot under an awning. Then Bucky stops, looks down at Steve.

Steve has kind of always taken his breath away. He's small, sure. Scrawny and little, the kid never picked for sports, always looked over by the rest of the kids unless they needed someone to pick on. But Steve never backed down, never hesitated. He's been brave for as long as Bucky's known him – stupid, and crazy, but so brave. That kid with the light in his eyes, with a heart big enough for a man ten times his size – Bucky's been, maybe, in love with that guy for a long time.

And for a long time, Bucky thought that kid might be gone for good, might have been buried under grief and fantasies and medications. When he came back, Bucky thought, maybe, his absence had finally gotten rid of all of what Steve used to be.

Steve's here now, though. He still looks worried, but under that Bucky can see – _Steve_ again. Not the war hero Steve used to pretend to be, not the masked superhero, just – Steve.

"Hey," Bucky says. He squeezes Steve's arm, once. "You don't have to apologize to me for anything, you got that? I'm the one who left."

Steve smiles at him. "Yeah, well," he says. "I told you to go save the world."

Bucky rolls his eyes. For the first time since he came back from the war, he isn't aware of anything around him – not the number of windows, doors, and back alleys he could count from right here, not the number of people on the streets around them, not the cars that pass by.

"I should've remembered," Bucky says, "that you are my world."

If they were still kids, he would've put a thick layer of sarcasm over that, to hide what he felt. If he hadn't killed more people that he can count, if Steve hadn't spent hundreds of nights in some hospital, away from him – then, maybe, he'd pretend he didn't mean it that way, didn't feel something so heavy.

But it all happened that way, and he does.

He puts his arm around Steve, and Steve doesn't say a word about the big ugly scar that runs from wrist to elbow and right up his shoulder. They walk back to Bucky's crumby apartment in Brooklyn, where the lights flicker half the time and the water always goes out from 6PM to 6:10PM exactly, and they sit on the couch and talk for hours, until there's nothing else to talk about. They sit close on the couch, and Steve curls up under Bucky's arm and dozes off – the medicine they've got him on makes him sleepy – so Bucky tries to do the same.

He isn't quite able to, though. He needs to stay awake, for now, and make sure Steve doesn't disappear on him again.

*

It's late afternoon by the time Steve wakes up. He hears, first, not the cars outside, or the people in the street, but the sound of someone else's heartbeat against his ear. He feels someone's hands in his hair, smells sweat and soap, motor oil and beer. He feels Bucky, warm against him.

For a second, Steve's heart seizes up and he thinks despite all the pills, the therapy, the doctors, he's back in another delusion, but then he hears, feels, Bucky say into his ear, "Breathe. I got you."

His heart slows from a mile to half a mile a minute. He pulls back a little, just so he can look at Bucky. It still shocks him a little, seeing him. Not because he looks different – and he does; the army put some years on him, not just in the scars or the length of his hair, but in his eyes – but because he spent such a long time believing he'd never see Bucky again.

And it's his own fault that he waited this long. Dr. Wilson okayed him months ago to call Bucky, to track him down, but Steve wanted to be sure – sure the treatments were really working, sure there'd never be any doubt that Bucky was real, and solid, and alive.

He knows, now, there might always be some small sliver of doubt – but he'll take it, if it means being here, where he's supposed to be.

"Hey," Steve says, when he remembers about words. He sits up a little so he's not on top of Bucky, tucks his legs underneath him. "Sorry, the stuff they gave me still makes me pretty drowsy."

"That's all right," Bucky says. "It's not like you weigh more than a bag of potato chips."

"Hey, we can't all be brick shithouses," Steve says. He prods Bucky in the chest, and quick as anything Bucky grabs his wrist, holding him there. He stares up at Steve, licks his lips, and Steve forgets about breathing again.

It's been a long time, even in Steve's head. They were kids, and Steve was okay, and Steve had already been in love with Bucky, maybe, for years.

He thinks about Bucky's mouth on his, lifetimes ago, and whether that would bring him closer or further from reality.

He wants to check, has to check, and it's maybe a bad idea, but Bucky seems to be having the same one, because he keeps one hand on Steve's wrist and puts his other behind Steve's head, and he leans up while Steve leans down, and it's –

Well, Steve can't say it's what he's been imagining, because he's spent a long time imagining some pretty wild things.

But it's good. He feels Bucky breathe out, feels them both relax until they're pressed against each other again. After a minute or two, Bucky pulls back a little. Steve has one hand on Bucky's shoulder to steady himself, the other wrapped up in Bucky's hair. Bucky squeezes Steve's wrist and asks, "How did you know where to find me?"

What Steve could say, and still mean it is, _I'd always find you._ But he tells the truth. "I didn't. They didn't have an address for you at the hospital. But I thought – maybe – you'd be back somewhere familiar."

Bucky stares at him. There's a smile creeping onto his lips, but he's also looking at Steve, a little, like he's – well, not crazy. But ridiculous. "So you just wandered into all the garages in Brooklyn?"

Steve ducks his head. "There aren't that many."

There are quite a few, but Steve got lucky and found the one employing James Buchanan Barnes within five tries.

Bucky shakes his head, laughs a little. "You should've called. I would've come and got you. I –" he stops, reaches up and touches Steve's face. "Hey," he says. "You know I would've been there every day if I could've, right?"

Steve nods, swallows. He doesn't say it wouldn't have made a difference, the way he was, just, "I know, Bucky."

"And you know I'm not letting you out of my sight from here on out, right?"

Steve knows he means it like _I just got you back_ , but also like, maybe (definitely) Steve needs someone to look after him, and that's going to be Bucky.

"Yeah," Steve says. He settles back down on the couch, curls up next to Bucky again. He can't remember the last time he spent this much time with another, real person, can't remember the last time anyone – not just anyone, Bucky – was warm and solid and strong against him. "That makes two of us," he says.

*

It doesn't take long for things to fall back into place, but nothing is perfect. Bucky barely sleeps, still, and when he does, he wakes up shouting at men he lost over a year ago, wakes up gasping for breath. But Steve scoots closer on the bed, puts his arm around Bucky's chest and reminds him to breathe, keeps his hand over Bucky's heart until he feels the beats slow down.

They both have their nightmares. The pills help, but Steve still dreams, sometimes, of Bucky falling; he still remembers being strong, and brave, and invincible.

"You're brave," Bucky reminds him, when Steve tries to explain one night. They're lying in bed, back to front with Bucky's arm wrapped around Steve's middle, his chin on Steve's shoulder. It's a warm July night, and the streetlights come in through the window and light everything up. "You came back," Bucky reminds him. "That's more than a lot of people would've been able to do."

"Yeah," Steve says. "Well, I had to. Who else was going to keep you from doing something stupid?"

Bucky shakes his head, sighs. "We can't all be superheroes, Steve."

"I'm not that," Steve reminds him. He shifts on the bed, turns so they're facing each other. "I was never that."

"You remember when you chased down those punks after they ran off with Ricky Diaz's backpack?" Bucky asks. 

"Sure," Steve says. He was eleven or twelve, maybe. Well before any of the heavy delusions started. He didn't think he was anyone but himself when he tackled Joey Falco and tried to grab the backpack from him. He got a bloody nose and a split lip for his troubles, but after that no one messed with Ricky.

"You were always a superhero, man," Bucky says. He leans forward a little, brushes his mouth over Steve's and adds, "You still are."

Steve laughs, and doesn't say anything, but he feels warm, and safe, and he settles back against Bucky so that they're both facing the window. Bucky reaches back toward the nightstand and grabs two sets of earplugs. He puts his in, but before he does the same for Steve he says, "Happy birthday, Stevie," and kisses Steve's shoulder. Together, they lie still and watch the fireworks from their window, the cracks and pops muffled enough to be tolerable for two men who have lived through wars.

He turns twenty-four to the sight of beautiful lights, to the feel of Bucky's breath warm on his shoulder, to Bucky's hand over his on his chest. They watch the lights together and then Steve falls asleep, not for the first time and not for the last, to the feeling of Bucky's heartbeat, steady and strong and real.


End file.
